Museophile discussion forums web site

Museophile discussion forums
aggregation of over 60 museum-related mailing lists and other news
feeds

The Museophile discussion forums website is available under
<URL:http://forums.museophile.net/>. As well as local forums,
over sixty external news feeds are accessible via the website to
registered users, ranging from museum-related mailing lists,
newsgroups and general news sources customised to search for
articles relevant to museum professionals and other "museophiles"
with cultural interests. If you are reading this on a museum or
cultural mailing list and the list is archived on-line, then you can
also access this list and its archives (along with many others) via
the Museophile discussion forums website.

To use the website, please visit
<URL:http://forums.museophile.net/>. If you would like to see a
sample of external newsfeeds without registering, please log on
using username "guest" with password "guest" (all lower case).
Please do not change the password so others can use this facility
too. You are welcome to register with your own username of course if
you find the facility useful so you can select your own news feeds
on a customised homepage whenever you visit the website. You are
also welcome to post messages to the local forums, which is possible
even without registration. If anyone would like a new forum adding
to the site for their own museum-related use, please feel free to
contact me on jpbowen [at] museophile__org__uk.

The website gained an honourable mention in the recent MW2003
Museums and the Web conference Best of the Web competition Best
Museum Professional's Site section, held in Charlotte, North
Carolina, USA, 20-22 March 2003. The site was developed as part of a
BASS/HEROBAC Business Award and Support Scheme project at London
South Bank University, UK. See
<URL:http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/best/win_professional.html>

Prof. Jonathan Bowen in FEST/CISM at London South Bank University
provided most of the content and Mike Houghton, a Research Fellow on
the project, installed and developed the underlying web technology.
A paper on museum discussion forums in general and the Museophile
discussion forums in particular entitled "Online Museum Discussion
Forums: What do we have? What do we need?" was presented at the
MW2003 conference. See
<URL:http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/bowen/bowen.html>

Feedback on the website is welcome. Results from a survey on
museum-related discussion forums conducted through this website will
be available in due course. Happy web surfing,

Prof. Jonathan Bowen
Professor of Computing
London South Bank University
CISM, Borough Road
London SE1 0AA, UK


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:56
                  Distributed: Monday, March 31, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-56-003
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